Positioning applications for mobile phones and other mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous. Long Term Evolution (LTE) and other technologies have several methods for providing terrestrial positioning, which can be useful in environments where a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) may not work with adequate accuracy, and may be required to implement E911 and/or other positioning features. Some of these methods (e.g., Observed Time Difference of Arrival (OTDOA)) depend on the mobile device obtaining a Positioning Reference Signal (PRS) or Cell-specific Reference Signal (CRS) from neighboring transmit stations (e.g., cells) within a neighbor search uncertainty window used by the mobile device. Accurate estimation of the position of the mobile device can therefore depend on a properly-evaluated search uncertainty window.
Traditional methods of establishing the size of this neighbor search uncertainty window are typically over-inclusive, setting the bounds of the uncertainty window much larger than they need to be in order to help ensure that a neighboring cell will be within the uncertainty window. This over-inclusiveness, however, can be inefficient, unnecessarily consuming processing resources, time, and power of the mobile device.